Ernest Hemingway is considered to be the most influential and most famous American writer of his time. He fought in and reported on wars, hunted big game, married four times, and survived several near-fatal accidents.
Hemingway was born in Oak Park Illinois. After graduating from high school, he got a job at a paper called "Kansas City Star". When World War broke out, he tried to enter the military, but his defective eye, hindered him from being accepted. He finally managed to get a job driving an American Red Cross ambulance. During one of his expedition, he was injured and hospitalized. After his release from the hospital he started his career as a writer.
During the 1920's, he lived in Paris, France
, where he worked as a foreign corespondent for the "Toronto Star". In 1925, he wrote a book called "In Our Time", which was marketed in New York. The next year he published a book called "The Sun Also Rises", a novel which brought him his first success. The book deals with a group of desultory people in exile from France and Spain-members of the "lost generation", a phrase made famous by Hemingway himself.
During the 1930's, Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War as a journalist. He raised money, for a party called the "Loyalists" and wrote a book about it called "The Fifth Column". In this book, the narrator is the protagonist. From more experience in Spain, he wrote a book called "For Whom the Bell Tolls" in 1940. This book was the most successful writing, based on sales of the book.
Following the war in Europe, Hemingway returned to his home in Cuba. In 1953, Hemingway received a Pulitzer prize for his book "The Old Man and the Sea". The book describes an old fisherman's struggle with a giant marlin, only to have it eaten by sharks after the fisherman boats it. By 1960, Hemingway was driven out of Cuba (Because of Castro), and moved to Finca, and then he moved to a house in Ketchum, Idaho.
Hemingway was suffering from severe depression, and anxiety attacks. He had gone to the Mayo Clinic in Massachusetts, to receive electro-shock therapy, but it didn't help him. Later that same year, Hemingway ended his life, with a shot gun.
Bibliography
- Baker, Carlos H. Hemmingway: A Life Story. Scribner, 1969
- Lovelock, James. Hemingway. Harvard University Press, 1985
- Lynn, Kenneth S. Hemmingway. Simon & Schuster, 1987
- McDowell, Nicholas. Hemingway. Rourke, 1989
- Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway:A Biography. Harper, 1985
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